Revolution Smashes through History and Tradition

Author(s): Carl Einstein and Charles W. Haxthausen

Source: October, Vol. 107, Carl Einstein (Winter, 2004), pp. 139-145
Published by: MIT Press
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 RevolutionSmashesThrough
Historyand Tradition*

CARL EINSTEIN

Translatedand introducedbyCharlesW. Haxthausen

This text marks the end of a seven-yearperiod during which, with the
exception of a singleshortessayon RudolfSchlichter(1920), Einsteinhad ceased
writingon contemporaryart;his artcriticismfrom1914 suggestswearydisillusion-
mentwiththe artworld.In a brieftext,"On PrimitiveArt"(1919), writtenin the
wake of the Germanrevolution,he had declared thatonlyrevolutionand partici-
pation in social reconstructioncould give art a purpose.1Evidentlyunimpressed
withBerlinDada's blend of artand politics,he now believed-at leastfora time-
thathe had foundsuch an artin Russia.The Russians"practicedabsolutepainting
like theypracticedabsolute politics,"he writes.The "destructionof the object" by
the artistsof the Russian avant-gardewas not a merelyformal affair,but the
destructionof both a social and epistemicorder,a bourgeois order founded on
possession,individualism, and the fictionof stablesubjectsand objects.Soaring on
thewaveof revolution,Einsteinproclaimsa dictatorship-notof the proletariatbut
of vision,a dynamic,functionalvision,unfetteredby objects,thatcan create a new
reality.Followinghis argumentto its radicalconclusion,Einsteinmakesa case-for
the only time in his writing-for"objectlesspainting,"for a nonrepresentational
art,as well as vision"directedagainstthe object,"visionas pure function.No other
textofEinstein'sso closelyintegratespoliticswitharttheory.
Einsteinreiteratedmuch of the argumentpresentedhere fiveyearslater in
the section "Russiansafterthe Revolution"in his ArtoftheTwentieth Century,but
by then his political stance had softened and his verdicthad soured: "In the opti-
cal experiments of these Russians there is more political conviction than
painting;more Marxismthan anythingelse.... The Russiansbegan witha formal
utopia... and ended with quite harmless canvases, despite all the talk about
* "RevolutiondurchbrichtGeschichteund Uberlieferung," unpublishedmanuscript,1921, from
Carl Einstein,Werke Band 4: Aus demNachlafiI, ed. Hermann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin:
Fannei & Walz, 1992), pp. 146-52.
1. See translation
byCharlesW. Haxthausen,"On Primitive 105 (Summer2003), p. 124.
Art,"October

OCTOBER 107, Winter2004,pp. 139-145. ? 2004 October

Magazine,Ltd.and Massachusetts
Institute
ofTechnology.
"Revolution
SmashesThrough
Historyand Tradition"? 2004 Fannei& WalzVerlag,
Berlin.

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140 OCTOBER

epochs, tendencies,dogmas. For these artistsare dogmatic; the dictatorshipof

the paintingmouth."2
The presenttextdid not appear duringEinstein'slifetime.An inscriptionon
the untitledmanuscript,"furRussenheftAus der Einleitungfurden Russischen
Maler (1921)," (For the Russianbooklet [orjournal, or issue] From the introduc-
tionforthe Russianpainter)has encouragedthe suppositionthatit mayhave been
intended for publication in Russia, perhaps even as an entryfor the GreatSoviet
Einstein'scorrespondencewithTonySimon-Wolfskehl
Encyclopedia. (1922-23) docu-
mentshis involvementin protractednegotiationsregardingplanned lecturesand
publicationsin revolutionary Russia.3German Neundorferhas, however,recently
argued plausiblythat the textwas destined for a publicationcloser to home: the
Berlin-basedjournal Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet, published by El Lissitzkyand Ilya
Ehrenburg.4Only two issues, dated March/Apriland May 1922, appeared, but
Einsteinwas listedin the firstissue as a futurecontributor.
A struck-through passage
at the end of the manuscriptindicatesthatthe "Russianpainter"referredto in the
inscriptionwas NathanAltmann,who spentsome timein Berlinand was involvedin
organizingthe huge state-sponsoredexhibitionof Russianart held at the Galerie
van Diemen in Berlin,whichopened in October 1922.

Revolution smashes through historyand tradition. Critique as action.

Traditionpiles up in the object;whateveris immediateis pushed aside, crushed.
Revolution's task: de-reification,destruction of the object in order that
humankindmaybe saved.
Man is fed up withdescribingobjects;now he is tryingto achieveutopia with
no regardforthe object or forpeople objectifiedbyproperty.
Objects, a medium for passive thinking,the hooks for mnemotechnic,the
technique of memory,a compulsion to slide everything down the same chute. At
best,permissionto interpret,but under threatof imprisonment.
Normallypeople are crushed to death by objects. This becomes a means of
repetition,of eternal returnfor cowards and the resigned,who therebyavoid
disillusionment.
Should it be objects that collapse or human beings? To assert the human
person, objects,whichare preservejars, mustbe destroyed.This is the uncomfort-

2. Carl Einstein,Die Kunstdes20.Jahrhunderts 1926), p. 160.

(Berlin:Propylaen-Verlag,
3. Undated lettersfrom 1923, Carl-Einstein-Archiv,Akademie der Kiinste,Berlin. Little came of
these plans and negotiations:an essay,"Ideinyiraspad Germanii" (The Decay of Ideas in Germany)
appeared in the Russian journal Rossiyain 1924; Einstein's play Die schlimme Botschaft(The Bad
Message) appeared in Russiantranslationin the same year.
4. GermanNeundorfer,"Kritik an Anschauung":Bildbeschreibung
imkunstkritischen WerkCarlEinsteins
(Wiirzburg:K6nigshausen& Neumann,2003), pp. 206-11.

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RevolutionSmashesThroughHistoryand Tradition 141

able riskof everyrevolution;as long as thatrevolutionis not the workof romantic

petitbourgeois,whichis to say,as long as it is not simplyavoided.
Objects anesthetize,rigidifyinto a mythof guaranteed continuity,into the
drunkenslumberof the mechanical.
Civilizationrepresentsitselfin a storeroomof objects,memorizedobstacles
to function.
Favoriteobjectof the bourgeois:SELF.In communismthe disappearanceof the
selfand the destructionof the objectgo hand in hand. SELF:a fallacya posteriori;at
the momentof action the selfdisappearscompletely. It resurfacesduringunproduc-
tivestatesof repose,an occasion forthe luxuriousrecuperationfromfunction.Just
like the object. The selfis the pension and savingsof the undynamicrentier.Both
selfand object are supposedlycapable of guaranteeingcertainty, immutability.The
world as tautology.One does not subordinateoneself to an action but to a craft
object,in whichso-calledknowledgeor practice,namelythe experienceof Grandpa
and Auntie,became calcified.To this correspondsthe wish to minimizeanything
dynamicand to Spenglerize new experience and historyinto tableaux. History
becomes a metaphor for a fewendlesslyrepeated banalities. Clearlyone quietly
understandstheseas havingcleverapplications.The peripheralobjectsbeginas the
firststimulus.Functionturnsintoindustrialapplication;thinkingbecomes consider-
ing,and vision,crippled,becomes observation.Thus does the objectinhibitpolitical
freedom.Sensibility, as experience of objects,becomes a conservatively bourgeois
matter.Butwhatis the majorityof the poor supposedto experience?Atbestthe care
and cultivationofobjectsthattherichman adoresand uses.
The poor man livesfunctionally, objectlessly;above all locked in a struggle
withthe fetishizedexcrementsof history.
Selfand object are supposed to vouch fora continuumof time,the returnof
nephews,in-laws,etc. A time,therefore,thatis arrested,fixedin objects; so much
so thatit is no longertimeat all but,emaciated,becomes a mere staticconnection
betweenobjectsand memorizedbon mots.
The poor are-mostly againsttheirwishes-forcedintoasceticism;theyare, as
it were,condemned to dynamictime,to history, to the catastropheof the interval.
Objects have slipped away from them. They are condemned to the povertyof func-
tionwitha chance forchange or to an emptytimecontinuum.And so asceticism,or
the technique formurderingobjects,mysticism, and utopianismare the primary
stimulantsimposedon them.Theydynamizeobjectlessly. Look at earlyChristianity,
the peasants'wars,etc. The poor own nothingthattheycould observeor describe;
theyhave no selfwithwhich dialecticallyto oppose an object, and so theymove
about as a selflessmass.
If the poor merelyseized the objects of the bourgeois withoutdestroying
them-except for those objects that are functional,i.e., objects of theirlabor-
then the poor immediately would become bourgeoisthemselves.The objectwould
nudge them, force them into the same culture,civilization,so thatobjects might
use those theyhad caused to fail.

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142 OCTOBER

Everydestructionof objects isjustified.

The bourgeoisis a paraphraseof the milieu of objects; he is a component,a
relation between objects. It is justified to destroythe bourgeois for the sake of
rescuing what is dynamic. In revolution man breaks apart, insofar as he is a
componentof objects thatare to be destroyed.
A dictatorshipof man is seizing power,directed against an experience of
which humanitysaw only the vulgar backside that beshat it; individualityis the
sentimentalexcuse for rule by objects. The historyof intervals,in which time
rushesmost quickly,mustbe written.Since all one does is describe,producing le
joli tableau,since science does not adapt itselfto time,it is preciselytime that is
being suppressed. One describes the stagnation of reification,but not the six-
day race of deconsolidation; and if one does do that, then it is with a discreet
smile, glancing sidewaystowarda fatalisticallyreassuringrestoration,in which
the bourgeois continuum of objects is once again revivedso that the thingless
person maydie.
Law collapsesalong withthings,since it is preciselyas a relationshipbetween
thingsthatlawwas established,a posteriori,in orderto sanctify them.
Vision, the consumption of objects, suggests that one is oneself an inert
object, indeed, in the face of these objects one happilysenses the continuityof
one's own superiorperson.
One ought to writethe historyof the expansion and diminutionof thing
and self.
Undoubtedly,therewas a conflictbetweenpictorialspace and wildlyprolifer-
ating painterlymeans. Inventivevisual experience was struckdead by descriptive
painting.One wound up withtastefularrangements.If therewas inventionat all, it
hardlysprang fromvisual experience; rather,subject matterwas importedfrom
literature.Poeticizing is description by dilettantes,who replace formwith the
touchinglydecoratedobject.
Most often one is content to fill up the ill-fatedcanvas with dead visual
experiences.These can be facilelypreservedin contrivedarrangements.Since the
so-called compositionwas encapsulated secondhand in feignedobjects, the help-
lesslyrepeated recipes were preservedtogetherwith those veryobjects that had
been pasted onto them.
Composition is not to be confused withvisual experience. It is worthno
more than anyotherarrangement,or a crease in a pair of trousers.
The object in combinationwithits associated pose had become a metaphor
of form,of unmediatedvision.Anygivenspatial experience was consumed with-
out too much effort;one was contentwithvariantsand regroupings.
Since Cubism, paintershave dared to destroypictorial conventionfor the
sake of creatingspace. It became clear thatwhat matteredwas not a likenessbut
the act ofvision,which,througha focuson interesting subjectmatterand technical
questionsof painting,had witheredawayto become no more than a conventional
truc,but now paintersno longer confinedthemselvesto investigatingformas a

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RevolutionSmashesThroughHistoryand Tradition 143

means forthe clarificationof objects; theydared to conceiveofvisionas a creative

activity.
At firstone abandoned the old, carefullyweighed opportunismof balance
between pictureand object, instead emphasizingspace, the structure imaginative,
which dominates the object. The importantthingwas to leave behind the old
rationalism,which presupposed that vision could ultimatelybe subordinatedto
some kind of reason; forshould any pictureso much as suggestthe achievement
one mayrightlyassume thatvisionitselfproceeds as a totalact, bearing
of totality,
its legitimation in itself,that it need not agreeably repeat the conventional
schemataof objects.
The object no longerdeterminesvision;rathervisionis now directedagainst
the object, ruthlessly, The object had to be identicalwiththe visual
dictatorially.
experience, and whenever it was deemed necessary,one invented objects that
were nothing more than representationsof the subjective act of vision, of the
formationof space. Object-relatedvision,in whichthe object overwhelmspictorial
form,is passive. Certainlythe object comfortablyleads the beholder back to his
practicalexistenceas a whole,just as in thiscase everyjudgmenton artgetsmixed
up withthe mental representationof real depicted objects. To see was something
like a rememberingof objects,and one tried to achieve a maximumequilibrium
betweenthe remnantsof activevisionand objects fixedin memory.
In objects, modes of vision died out, and those objects, as depositoriesof
worn-outvision,hindered the advance towardthe autonomous subjectiveact of
vision.
It was the Russiansin particularwho, as it were,elevated the viewingsubject
to be the unfetteredbearer of the image,just as theyhad dared politicallyto
proclaim the dictatorshipof humankindover objects thathad grownrigid.They
practiced absolute painting as theypracticed absolute politics. The object was
destroyedfor the sake of the dynamicvisual act. From this affirmationof the
pure,self-containedact ofvision,correspondingroughlyto freelyinventedobjects
arising from the dictatorshipof vision, we gained an insightthat is especially
importantforus. This paintingof the absolute,thisgraspingafterthe pure visual
function,demonstratedthat the absolute is not some ideological generality,but
alwaysa perfectlyconcreteindividualexperience thathas nothingto do withany
metaphysicalor posthumouslyretrospectivetheoreticalproduct.As function,the
absolute is thoroughlyunmetaphysicaland untranscendent.The experience of
the absolute can be representedas fullyor as inadequatelyas any other experi-
ence, once the artist,insteadof representinglazy,run-downmetaphoricalobjects,
turnsto inventingfreelythe formsappropriateto thisfunction.
Here we will not address the conflictingspecific spatial qualities of the
work,the qualitativelydifferentmode of producing the work,and thejudgment
of the beholder.
This absolute,confinedas it is withinthe limitsof an experience,is simplya
markerof the intensityof human self-assertion. To wantto pass it offsomehowas

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144 OCTOBER

an overarchingconcept, an idea, or some other theoreticalconstructis nonsense.

This disposes of the objection to nonrepresentationalpaintingby those who view
it only as the product of theoretical speculation. Whoever takes this position
assumessubjectand object to be metaphysicaldestinyand has neverprogressedto
function,of which both object and subject are mere residues, conventions of
petrification-preciselywhat is shatteredby revolution.If one paints an object
one indicates one's own viewpoint,how I see it; if one paints one's functional
vision,one positsfunctionitself,ratherthan the retroactively feignedI thatvainly
mirrorsand embellishesitselfin the object.
This absolute, as it is representedintuitively,does not claim for itselfthe
statusof a law.Rather,it clearlydemonstratespreciselythe arbitrarinessof whatis
ostensiblybased on law. Hence the retreatof the bourgeois into a tranquil,law-
based world is rendered virtuallyimpossible,since he becomes transfixedin a
dictatorialfunction,whichyetmakes no claim to be anythingmore than concrete
experience.In place of credulouslyveneratedbut calcifiedlawsbeyondand ostensi-
blyabove function,he is,withhallucinationsof pure act, made into an object,and
thisseeksto assertitselfnot throughsome otherexistence,but throughthe intensity
of suggestion.Dictatorshipof vision,ascetics of the object, destructionof facts,
and, accordingly, renunciationof the self.
In Russia such painting has been incorporatedinto a more revolutionary
conception.
Understandably,such a subjectivelyoriented painting will no longer feel
bound byold paintingtricks.If space was to be achieved,then painting,strikinga
decorativepose whenfacedwithunmediatedvision,had to be destroyed.
The Russians decided in favorof functionand relentlesslysacrificedto it
inheritedmodes ofvisionwithwhichobjects had become encrusted.
Often such paintingis scorned as "insensible,"as inaccessibleto the senses,
but thisis preciselya confusionof objectwithvision.
Russian artistsexpropriatedobjects fromthe old paintingand were urged
on by Lenin's revolutionto the investigationand unmediated representationof
pictorialvisionitself.
The object was eaten away by the functional,the fluctuantexperience of
space; the function,alien to the object, was seized. However,one avoided the
error of antiquarian metaphysics,according to which, say,some universalityis
enthronedbehind de-objectification, and in tune withwhichone likesto practice
some roughversionof applied logic as craft.
Throughfunctionone advanced to the strugglebetweenspecificqualitiesof
space. Such a formwas self-sufficient
as an object.One renouncestheobligingclassic
reconciliationbetweena so-called reality,namelypetrifications, and an inherited
taste; one renounces those objects that merelyserve to inhibit revolutionary
action, and one renounces the continuitybetween premiseand the givenworld.
What,afterall, was one supposed to do withthatworld,consideringthatone had
rejected it out of utopian zeal? Since what matteredwas not to allow objects to

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RevolutionSmashesThroughHistoryand Tradition 145

repeat themselvesconservatively and tautologically, but to clear them out of the

wayso thatutopia could be realized?Utopia is functionpreventedfromrealization
by the mass of accumulated calcifications. The visual process was no longer
conceived as peripheralexcitationby objects,but as an act of subjectivedomina-
tion. Vision had become dictatorial.The object collapsed under the intensityof
naive experience.Space was no longerthe siteof a pose; itwas exploded, split,lay-
ered-it became function instead of systemor relation between things. It is
preciselythe concretelyexperienced "absolute" that tremendouslyincreases the
skepticism toward metaphysics, thing, and self. Thus the intuition of the
"absolute"in mysticthoughtis indeed bound up withthe annihilationof selfand
thing,yet it remains a fixed singular experience. The concretized absolute is
simplyalien to science.
Nothing is more endangered by words than a functionthat is interpreted.
To call artobjectlessdoes not mean thatno object is produced,but ratherthatthe
object that is produced is roughlyidentical to function,which in this particular
case means the visualizationof pictorialspace. It is not an object, then,thatwould
forthe mostpartexistindependentlyof aestheticvisualexperience.
When it is preciselythevisualprocessthatis at stake,thenthatis more impor-
tantthan flowerpotsor rounded hips. The diagonal,a mediationof experience,is
removed.The subject createsan object identical to self;looking at picturesthen
becomes a unificationof the creativesubjectwithselfin the act of spatialcreation
ratherthan an associationgroundedin memory.Space, an expressionof function,
is no longersuppressedbyobjects;dictatorshipof the eye.
In the same measure, politics purged Russia of objects. Politics was no
longer about the approval of conservativelytautological things;it had become
overwhelmingly a subjectivefunction,a dictatorshipof the thingless.

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